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Showhouse Showcase: Sensationally Soothing

Showhouses are meant to inspire. The three rooms that follow prompt style as well as generosity. Not only were they created by women who are designers and passionate volunteers, but they also benefit worthy causes. Their serene colors and soft materials create a sanctuary from hectic lives of work, play, and giving.

Given the right weather, most people love spending time outdoors. But when designer Liz McEnaney took charge of a room overlooking a showhouse property's gardens, she used such soft colors and lovely furnishings that it might lure people inside even on a perfect day. "I'm a much better gardener than a decorator," Liz admits. "This was an opportunity to combine my love of design and my love of gardening."

On ivory stone walls, arched windows that would have been compromised with window treatments are left bare to grant easy views to the gardens. A seating arrangement features a clean-lined sofa topped with blue-and-white pillows, a pair of milky green armchairs edged in gold, and a brass coffee table.

Today, the treatment of the interior wall is graceful and delicate, but it didn't start that way. The wall housed the backside of the living room fireplace and was laden with soffits, turns, and asymmetrical doors. To unify its obstructive elements, a hand-painted mural of trees covers the wall. Reflected in the windows and the views to the outside, the gray-blue scene adds interest without overwhelming any other component of the room. "I wanted the focus to be outside," says Liz. "The mural adds to the feeling of being enveloped in a lush garden."

There's light for the sake of necessity, and light for creating a pleasing aesthetic. Both came into play for interior designer Annika Christensen, born and raised in Sweden, where winter months afford only a small window of opportunity for sunlight. In the showhouse's master sitting room, she drew on her heritage to secure a palette that calms and promotes restful activity.

Unified by a large flokati rug are a Swedish antique sofa and chairs, all upholstered with blue-and-white seersucker, a modern variation on the ticking stripe that is often used in Swedish design. An organically shaped lamp and two occasional tables add a hint of a contemporary edge. The paper-shade lamp suggests movement, and a clear Lucite coffee table and a little round steel table from the 1960s enhance the room's airy ambience. Window treatments are fabricated from an ivory linen-and-silk-blend sheer that is adorned with light-reflecting glass beads.

"There is no better inspiration than the location itself, so I made a trip to Sweden to handpick pieces," says Annika. It was a painting by Swedish artist Lennart Hall that inspired the warm gray of the grasscloth that covers the walls. Titled Painting from Summer, the modern oil hangs above a linen-skirted console table and offers a canvas filled with neutral gray interrupted by pops of intense, bright colors.

Interior designers often imagine a fictional character for whom their showhouse room is created. For this master bedroom in Old Westbury, Kate Singer used the room’s real-life former occupant -- the late New York philanthropist Peggie Phipps Boegner, whose parents built the mansion -- as inspiration for a space drenched in ethereal silver, gray, lilac, and green.

“Mrs. Phipps was a phenomenal philanthropist who opened Old Westbury Gardens, which she founded in 1959, to the public a few years back,” says Kate.

The designer used the lavender hue of the wisteria just outside the room’s windows as a springboard for other colors. A spring-green headboard, white linens bordered in lilac, and a checked silk in lilac and green pull the palette together. The embroidery on the silk bolster pillow inspired the vine motif that’s hand-painted on the gray wall.